The subject matter disclosed herein relates to a rooftop unit and, more particularly, to a rooftop air conditioning unit to provide conditioned air to a conditioned space within a building.
Most modern buildings, especially large office buildings, hotels and residences, require substantial heating and cooling systems to maintain comfortable living and working conditions in their respective interiors. These systems often include rooftop units that are disposed on rooftops where ready supplies of inlet air can be found and negative issues associated with the noise and exhaust they generate can be mitigated.
Where the systems are configured to provide heating, the systems typically include tubular heat exchangers in which combustible materials are combusted within a tubular member and the heat from this combustion is transmitted directly to air surrounding the tubular member. This air is then transported to the interior of the corresponding building as heated air.
The existing tubular furnace designs can provide high air temperatures on a local level. In order to insure that these high air temperatures do not pose an ignition, safety and/or reliability risk, significant testing is required for all possible unit configurations. This testing requirement represents a significant cost and, if a particular design calls for an alternative unit configuration, the testing must be repeated or the unit configuration cannot be used.